“Oh, this is fetching,” the old man tottered, smiling up at the Light Rail car. “Like a real train, but in miniature.”

  Gloria followed Pema onto the train. She had to weave around the thin crowd of midday commuters; she’d rather not upset anyone by jostling them with her invisible body. Pema, however, seemed oblivious to the crosswise stares he was attracting: an old man dressed in odd clothing seemingly chattering to himself at full volume.

  “I love trains. The ultimate mode of transportation for window-watchers like myself. The view from an airplane is more spectacular, obviously, but it’s too distant, you lose all the fine detail. And, I’ve learned the hard way, driving a car isn’t always wise when you’re as distraction-prone as I am. I- Ooh! Feel free to stare, you’re invisible: the woman sitting at the end, on the right, has heterochromia. Beautiful. Waardenburg syndrome, it looks like. Her PAX3 gene is just gorgeous, so singular. You can’t see that of course-”

  Gloria let the man’s chatter roll over her, allowed the white noise of it to calm her. She kept glancing over her shoulder in the direction of the parking lot they’d abandoned the cop car at, ten minutes ago. She expected at any moment for sirens to blare, for the train to stop, for police officers to swarm on and arrest her.

  Then she’d catch her non-reflection in the window, see the empty space where she knew she was standing, and remember that they couldn’t even if they tried. She wrestled with a mix of exultation and anxiety. This was all so dreamlike.

  “Don’t worry so much about the police,” Pema assured, zeroing in on her thoughts with the eerily invasive affect he had. Was he just a good guesser? Gloria half-remembered a documentary on mentalists she’d watched the previous month. It was the only explanation that she could come up with for his inhuman insight. “They won’t find you.”

  But then again, she’d been invisible for the last two days. Clearly forces were in play that she didn’t understand.

  “If the police can’t find me, why did we have to hurry away from the car?”

  Pema drew his lips tight, seemed to puzzle over some phrasing. He reached over and patted Gloria’s hand. “Gloria, you’re going to find this a little troubling, but I guess it would be patronizing of me to try to spare you much longer. You were being followed, back at the park. It’s why I made contact with you in the first place, why I was so, er, supportive of your desire to steal a car.”

  Gloria frowned. “How? Nobody can see me.”

  “Well, I can.” Pema grinned briefly. “A handful of other people can too, though not quite so well as I. Or- to be more accurate, they can see a sort of outline around you. The space where you’re not.”

  “Huh.” Gloria didn’t understand. “What did the person following me want?”

  “To kill you, dear.”

  Gloria’s hand fluttered to her mouth. “What? What did I ever do?”

  “Oh, nothing, nothing. It’s no fault of yours; just a bit of nasty sport.”

  “Sport?” Gloria was scanning the train car again, looking to see if any of the passengers were casting her a glance, pretending not to notice her. She’d never been followed before.

  “People like you and I are worth far more dead than alive, unfortunately,” Pema tutted. “For reasons that are too complex and morbid to bother our fellow passengers with at the moment.”

  “So where are we going?”

  The train came to a stop. It was one Gloria knew well, as it was only two blocks from her home. Pema nodded toward the doors, and she followed him out onto the street. The open space frightened her a little, made her feel suddenly naked in light of the revelation that she was prey.

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  “Don’t quail so, dear. You’re perfectly safe with me.”

  “Are we going to- You’re taking me home?”

  Pema nodded. “Briefly. Just so you can collect your things. I’m dreadfully sorry, but your home will cease to be very safe soon. You’ll be better off grabbing some essentials and making yourself scarce.”

  “Wait,” Gloria planted herself in the sidewalk, raised her hands to her face, shook her head. “Wait, wait, wait. I can’t go home anymore?”

  Pema cocked his head, stared at her, through her, too-perceptive, invasive. “It’s a shame, yes. But, on the bright side, you hate your home.”

  “What?”

  “Just the sight of it fills you with dread. It might be good to take a little sojourn.”

  Gloria gawked at the old man. “How do you know all this? It’s spooky, Pema.”

  Pema gestured around him, at the street, the trees, the cars passing. “I can know anything about everything that’s within a few dozen meters of me. It’s my gift. It comes from the same place that yours does, your newfound invisibility.”

  “It doesn’t feel like a gift.” Gloria looked down at the space where her hands should be. “What did I do to deserve this?”

  “Well, the full answer is complicated and hardly understood, even by me. The simple answer is that you died, just briefly, and came back,” Pema explained. “The vast majority of people who die, you know, stay dead. Then there’s a small population who get help in time, are resuscitated medically, and remain normal. For a very small sliver of that population, though, after they’re lucky enough to dodge their brush with the bardo, they come back a little changed. People like you, and I.”

  Gloria frowned. “I’ve never died. I don’t think.”

  “It may have been ever so brief that you didn’t notice it,” he was staring at her again, piercing his skull with his eyes. Halfway through the sentence, a flash of uncertainty rumpled his face. “Oh.”

  “What?”

  Pema puzzled with himself for a moment, then turned, continued walking in the direction of Gloria’s home. Gloria huffed and hustled after him.

  “What? You don’t believe me?”

  Pema’s eyes were darting around, pinballs bouncing in his sockets. His fingers twitched like he was doing some sort of calculation. After a few seconds, he glanced back up at her. “You’re right. Fascinating. You haven’t died yet.”

  “Did you just… check? How does that work?”

  “It makes absolutely no sense. You’re positively awash in Qi. Your Knack is in full swing. But you’ve never-” Pema grew silent again, troubled. Her apartment was up ahead now, the building visible at the end of the block. He waved her on. “You go. I won’t be much of a conversationalist for a bit. Lots to think on.”

  “It’s safe?” Gloria glanced back over her shoulder. “What about whoever was following me?”

  Pema waved his hand, already distracted. “You’re fine, dear. If anything happens, I’ll intervene. Go pack and meet me back here.”

  Gloria nodded, uncertain, but continued on. Things were so dreamlike, now, the last few days so violently different than what she had come to accept as Real Life, over the course of the last six and a half decades, that she found herself acting without thinking, doing without planning. This was almost as alien to her as her invisibility.

  She walked up the stairs to her apartment, and thought about what Pema had said. She did hate her home. Normally, at this point on the stairs, the dread of the dark quiet within her apartment would be mounting, growing in the back of her throat, bile-bitter. Now all she felt was a distant paranoia, a swirling confusion, and something like a thrill. Things were happening. She wouldn’t be wasting away in her home all week. She’d be on the run with a mysterious old man she had by now decided was some sort of wizard.

  As she produced her keys and went to open her door, she thought about how this might be the last time she’d do so, if not for ever, then for quite a while. She was just starting to realize that she felt excited about the prospect, when she heard the click of something just on the other side of the door, smelled an odd, chemical tang in the air.

  Then her apartment exploded.

  Quiet, then wings.

  A flurry of birds, more a mass of feathers and song than any discernible crowd of individuals, bore her up. She was surrounded by a song of gratitude, of acknowledgement. Beady eyes saw her, perceived her, and rejoiced in the witness.

  Somewhere else, below her, faded figures watched her ascent with pride and wonder. They had never expected such beauty of Gloria, such victory. They cheered, thrilled for her good fortune, sheepish that they’d all collective underestimated her so.

  She laughed, exultant. The birds remembered her, they assured her. They all remembered.

  Then, in between wingbeats and after an eon, it all went away.